Naftali Bennett, leader of the Jewish Home party, has submitted a bill to amend the Basic Law on Jerusalem, according to which any transfer of sovereignty in Jerusalem would require a special majority of 80 Knesset members, out of 120. The current law requires a majority of 61 votes for any such action (see text here).

A vote on the law in the Ministerial Committee on legislation was postponed by Netanyahu, officially due to procedural reason, likely motivated by a desire to deprive the Jewish Home Party of political credit for advancing the bill, by requiring that the bill first be discussed and agreed by all coalition members. Reportedly, Netanyahu also requested that a somewhat watered-down version of the text would be drafted. The revised version indeed provides a meaningful loophole that would enable the Knesset to alter the boundaries of the Jerusalem Municipality through a simple majority vote (see protocol of the discussion in the Knesset here in Hebrew).

This revised version of the bill was approved by the Ministerial Committee on Legislation on Sunday July 16 and on July 19 passed a preliminary reading at the Knesset. It now requires three separate votes in the Knesset in order to amend the current Basic Law. Given that the government coalition supports the text, the bill is expected to pass without difficulty.

This bill will create tremendous obstacles to all governments genuinely interested in reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians - an agreement that necessarily would include the establishment of both an Israeli and a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem. Preventing any future Israel government from ever negotiating or signing such an agreement is the clear purpose of this legislation.